i'm a little bit ahead in the polls. romney is not that great a debater. he's going to get a bump being on the same stage as me. so it was a strategy that maybe if you were sitting in a hotel room might have made sense. but it was pretty clear, i think, art, don't you, that five or ten minutes into the debate, you were seeing an assertive, confident romney and the president just didn't read it. he had to change his style. he didn't. and too polite is perhaps a polite way of putting it. he was disengaged. he lacked passion. he didn't seem engaged with the issues. so he's going to be very different. >> arthel: then you bring in the factor that at the next debate tuesday will be in a town hall meeting. i wonder how you think this will affect the tone since we're talking about the questions coming from people, from actual citizens, voters. >> i love town hall debates because people tend to ask different questions than reporters. we can almost guess the reporter's questions. but when you have people asking them, they tend to go much more to looking for characte